Chasm and Flood
by abelard
Summary: Lee loses Kara and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a special destiny.
1. Last

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 1?

Author: abelard

Rating: K, soon to be M

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 1

She came back dead.

Starbuck was hauling ass away from Cylon-infested Picon with one hundred and fifty-eight survivors crowded into a heavy raider. The viper squadron managed to keep pursuing Cylons from blowing Starbuck's ship out of space. Lee wasn't flying; the Admiral told Lee he was needed in CIC to run tactical as Starbuck executed her crazy rescue plan. (After getting the Caprica and Sagittaron survivors out alive, her exact words were, "Picon should be a snap.") But when Lee heard Kat say Starbuck was all clear, that the enemy raiders had been destroyed, he sighed in relief and listened with happiness to the victory cheer swell up around him.

Then he heard Starbuck mutter over the open channel, her voice subdued and serious (_she's never subdued or serious_, thought Lee in a flash of panic), "Lee, I love you."

Next came the Chief's voice, yelling into the com, telling CIC that Starbuck had crashed hard into the deck.

Lee did not hear the Chief's frantic report. He was running by then. Starbuck had just said she loved him. That could only mean one thing.

He got to the ship – by now, a wreck – and the Chief had already managed to get the main hatch open. Lee had no eyes for the shivering, terrified civilians in the hull. He saw only the pilot, sitting at the controls, motionless. Almost calmly. "Starbuck!" he screamed. He reached her and put his hand on her shouler; she fell over. He noticed the pool of blood surrounding her seat as he hauled her out of the chair, out of the ship. He had her on the ground, on her back, and shouted in her face. "STARBUCK!"

"She was hit in the stomach," someone said. Lee looked up. One of the Picon survivors. A man in his early 50s. "She was shot as we were boarding. I don't know how she managed to pilot us out of there, but she did, bleeding to death the whole time."

Lee doesn't remember any of the next ten, twenty minutes. He remembers arguing, using as loud a voice as he's ever used, fighting with Cottle (Lee doesn't remember what he was trying to get Cottle to do or not do), following Starbuck – she was on a stretcher – to Life Station. These are sounds and images that form a massive blur in Lee's memory. The next thing he remembers with clarity is saying:

"Then please, please, just leave me alone with her. Please, I'm begging you." He said this to Cottle. He recalls that he was crying.

Cottle and the other medics, as well as the somber group of deck hands and pilots who had been trailing Lee, left.

Lee looked down upon her body. Apollo gazed upon the corpse of Starbuck. He stayed there a long time.

He did not know. he did not know he did not

then he knew. He knew what to do.

He picked up the phone and called for Helo and Cally. They showed up. Lee gave a few orders. Apollo held Starbuck's cold hand waiting for the orders to be carried out.

Helo and Cally returned with what Lee needed: all the thread they could find, a pair of sewing needles, and a near-antique silk parachute stolen from what would have been the Galactica's Aeronautical History wing, had it been allowed to retire into museumhood. Then Helo and Cally left.

Apollo filled a bucket with warm water and found a sponge. First he stripped Starbuck down, surveyed the mess of blood at her midsection, the bruises on other parts of her, the tattoos. Her flesh. Then he bathed her body until it was clean. He was thinking of literature, of stories of fallen warriors, of how their bodies would be annointed before burial. Lee had no scented oils for her, but he could do this. This he could do.

He cut the white silk parachute into two pieces, and began to sew. He sat in a low stool beside her just-washed nakedness and sewed her shroud. To imagine putting her to rest in a dress uniform, or, gods forbid, formalwear of some kind, was ridiculous. Lee didn't quite know why, but this was right. A shroud it would be, like in ancient times, and he would make it for her.

When the shroud was done, he couldn't bring himself to sew her up in it. Instead, he sat – all night, in fact – and continued to hold her hand, the white silk half-enclosing her. He did not speak to her. He did not sleep. He grew cold, almost as cold as she, and held her hand.

The clock told him it was five in the "morning," and his father walked in. Admiral Adama took in the sight before him – the partial covering, the loose threads, the grieving man, the dead woman – and ripped the gold braid from the right sleeve of his dress uniform. "Use this to close it," he said. "The funeral is in one hour."

_Probably better that way_, Lee thought. _Better to do it soon, now, go through it quickly since it has to be gone through. _But was there any getting "through?" Lee felt as if he was entering a dark tunnel that had no end.

He shredded his father's gold braid and threaded it through the eye of a needle. Part of Starbuck's shroud was sewn together with those remnants.

They sent her coffin out to space with no speeches. Words were past everybody. There was no music. Lee had thought of playing something of her father's, but rummaging through her locker, sorting through her music collection, was beyond him. It seemed as if the entire ship stood at attention as they jettisoned her. The hundred and fifty-eight survivors, for whose lives Starbuck had traded her own, were there. Even the President was there.

Lee was sure Roslin hadn't meant him to overhear what she said to the Admiral about Starbuck's funeral:

"You know why so many were in attendance?" Roslin asked Adama. The Old Man shook his head. His blue eyes were wet. "Because now they're frightened."

"They weren't before?" Adama asked.

"Captain Thrace was a talisman for them – proof that they could face these incredible odds and still come out intact. Now that she's gone..."

Lee walked away then. He was conscious of becoming a different man, a different...entity, with each step. He felt his normal human functions closing down. From now on, there would be the outside, his duty, his decisions, and then there would be the wall. Nothing would penetrate that wall. Behind the wall, Lee was not sure what he would keep, but he knew that she, the memory of her, would be one of them. All of the conversations they never finished, would never finish, the loose threads, would be kept there behind the wall. And no one would get behind that wall again. Maybe not even himself.


	2. Visitation

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 2?

Author: abelard

Rating: K, soon to be M

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 2

He broke up with Dee without saying a word. It was the very fact that he couldn't speak to her, and not just to her, but to anyone, in the days and weeks after Starbuck's death unless the conversation were clearly related to his duties as an officer, that ended things.

He felt only gratitude when Dee came to his office one day and simply, silently, returned the presents he'd given to her during the months they'd dated. He would have protested that she should feel free to keep them. He would have, if he'd been able to speak in language that wasn't giving or acknowledging orders.

He didn't allow himself to feel much in that first month after they launched Starbuck into space inside a silk shroud and a coffin – the wall he put up was a mile thick, and held through almost everything – but when emotion did punch its way through, it was mostly regret. Had he really spent the last few months of Kara's life in a relationship with somebody else? It seemed impossible. He'd been laughing and snuggling with some other woman, and all that time, his minutes with Kara were running down, their number getting smaller. He frittered them all away on someone who was just, they both knew, keeping him company. And Kara's last words had been for him. She used her dying breath to tell him that she loved him. He'd known, but the knowledge was buried deep down. He'd thought it would take years and too much forgiveness than either he or Starbuck possessed to surface it. Then, suddenly, Starbuck was bleeding her life out and there it was. He hadn't said it back. He knew that her saying it was signal enough about the pain she was in, the brink she was on, and he was running a split second after her last proclamation. But if he'd known then that he'd be too late getting to her, if he'd just have spoken into the headset before her final landing...

_I love you too, Kara._

It would have been the last thing she heard.

The first month passed, and Lee knew they were all worried about him, but he wasn't worried. He was numb and stoic, but he didn't especially think that was a cause for concern. He was still going, he hadn't closed down, he carried out his responsibilities with the precision and leadership necessary. He was every bit the pilot, CAG, and Major he'd ever been.

He just wasn't a man anymore.

He knew there was a difference between functioning and living. But he felt zero compunction to make the others feel better by trying to get from wherever he was to "normal." Frak them. What did it matter whether he was the same as before? He was doing what they required, giving them what they needed from him, wasn't he? He wasn't worried about himself, why should they worry about him?

Then he started seeing things. He started seeing _her_.

Glimpses, at first, in the corridors. As if she was walking twenty paces ahead of him, rounding the corner just when he caught sight of the back of her head, her ponytail swaying, her flight suit disappearing as Lee's steps unconsciously sped up. Of course, whenever he turned those corners, she wasn't there.

Then, she was. He saw her sitting at the back of the briefing room, for only an instant. He saw her laughing at the triad table, sitting just a little outside the circle of officers playing a heated game. Once, he saw her naked in the shower stall directly in front of where he was shaving. He dropped the razor and craned his neck to get a better view of her. But nothing. The shower wasn't even running. Lee touched his hand to the tiles and felt them to be dry.

Her voice started coming to him...it began in his dreams but filled up the first moments of wakefulness..._Lee, Lee, Lee_. She said his name with such...love. She spoke to him as if she loved him.

_Of course she loves you, idiot_, Lee chastised himself. _Didn't she tell you so? _He wanted to say it back, except he could never find her, never really see her for more than a fraction of a second at a time...

He understood that he was going crazy when he did finally see her, hear her, for a significant amount of time. It was in his office, on a rare night when he had no shifts in a Viper or in CIC. He decided to give in a little to his need to spend some time with her, with things that reminded him of her. He lit a cigar and nursed a bottle of the Chief's swill and dwelled on memories without apology.

"Lee," she said and sat beside him.

"Kara," he breathed. She was in her tanks, fatigues, and combat boots: her usual off-duty attire. Her hair was loose and hung almost to her shoulders. She was smiling.

"You're..." he said.

"Dead?" she finished for him. Her smile got even wider. That look on her face always meant trouble. How Lee had longed to be in that kind of trouble again. "That doesn't mean I'm not real," Kara said. She laid her hand on top of his. It was warm. Lee remembered clutching her hand all night, the night she had died. And now, the skin of her palm, her fingers...she was so warm. "Don't I feel real?" she asked in that voice, that voice which, at that particular pitch, could make him hard even without physical contact.

"Yes," he ground out. "But it's not...it doesn't make any..."

"Sense?" She always could finish his sentences if she cared to, they knew each other's minds like they had telepathy. "What good is sense? What about your senses, what do they tell you?" She moved closer, until her side pressed up against his. He felt his cock swell and lengthen.

"That you're here, with me," Lee said. He felt himself surrender to her, to the feel and heat of her. He gave himself up to the madness of the dream. He reached up and held her face, drew her in close and kissed her long, deep, and hard. She kissed him back, breathed heavily against him when their lips parted. Her breath smelled so sweet, he listened for the sound of her exhalations and put his palm on her heart. He felt it beating. He had to have her.

"Kara, I..." He wanted to apologize for his roughness, his urgency, even as he pressed her down into the cot, began working up the hems of her shirts.

"Shhh, I want it, so much. I want you," she said, and nothing had ever felt so right.

When they were both naked, Lee slid inside her and was immediately enclosed in her hot wetness. "Gods..." he said before he began to stroke in and out of her, sensuous and strong and loving. "Gods, Kara, I love you."

"Me, too," she said. He dared a look at her face – she was real, she was right there, he was making love to her and nothing could ever be so good – he saw her face and his heart melted. She was grinning with pleasure. With glee. She was as happy as he was. For once in their lives, they were in the same place.

_For once in our lives..._

Lee didn't dwell on his thoughts. Kara was speaking, compelling him to listen to her, always. "How many times were we together like this?" she asked.

Lee was so close, speeding up his thrusts, he was going to come so hard, and so was she, he felt her shivering on the inside...

"Twice," he managed to answer, as he began frakking her in earnest, so hard, Gods, he was so hard...Both times before had been in anger and frustration and hadn't felt like this, so full and lush...

"It wasn't enough," said Kara.

They came apart together. Lee felt himself surge in her and fill her up, and smiled and cried a little as she rained kisses all over his face, his chest. He stayed inside her long enough to feel the last of her breathtaking spasms around his cock, then he withdrew and gathered her body close. He fell asleep in her arms.

When he woke, he was alone. _Where did she...?_

But he knew where she'd gone, and when.

He'd made love to a ghost.

Lee began to worry about himself.


	3. Another Parting

A/N: Thank you to everyone for all of your feedback! Sorry to be so lame in posting chapters: a mean spell of illness nabbed me, but I am on the upswing now. Chapter 3 is still angsty, but I swear it is the last bit of angst for a good long while! Chapter 4 will be WAY MORE FUN, I swear!

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 3?

Author: abelard

Rating: M

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 3

Starbuck showed up every now and then, and it alternately put Lee's broken soul back together, and tore it apart all over again.

One morning, Lee went running and she joined him. She appeared from nowhere and kept pace at his side just like she sometimes did when she was alive. She cracked jokes in her acerbic way, making fun of everyone, teasing Lee about his tightass love of regulations and his overly precise stride. Lee only stopped laughing at her barbs when he saw Gaeta looking at him like he'd lost his mind. Which of course he had, going for his morning jog with a specter of his best friend.

Starbuck's appearances were fine with Lee – more than fine, completely frakking welcome and Lee reveled in her – when Lee was all by himself, but when she sat next to him in the mess, or started talking to him while he was conversing with other people, it made him fear that he'd never be functionally sane again. He tried to ignore her sly, suggestive taunting, her sarcastic jabs, but when the hell had Starbuck ever been easy to ignore? She was larger than life. Even now that she was dead – she was larger than life itself, more present and more real to Lee than any other person on the Galactica.

He made love to her more than once in the CAG office. He couldn't help himself. There she was and sometimes she was naked, sometimes she was wearing nothing but one of his tanks...She was always so willing and wanting...Lee let himself sink into her warmth and wetness and find paradise for the few moments he had after he got off duty and before he got some sleep...And she was always gone when he awoke, drowsy and sated and even more alone, and even more mad, than he'd been before...

He didn't question that. He refused to. At the worst, it was his imagination fulfilling his longest-held fantasy: a sexual relationship with Kara that was loving, not confusing or angry or tormented. As long as his grief-driven imagination didn't hurt anyone or affect his ability to do his jobs, Lee felt he was well within his rights to enjoy his ghost lover.

But one day, she showed up in the war room. Lee was with Adama, Tigh, Gaeta, and Chief Tyrol, planning out another raid for tylium on another Cylon-held planet, this one even better secured than the last one that Lee had effectively infiltrated and overtaken, and Tigh was running the show, suggesting a detachment of five Vipers break off from engaging the defending raiders head-on to make a run for the planet. Lee had a gut feeling Tigh's plan wouldn't work, but was waiting to hear out his plan. But Starbuck had no such patience.

"Oh my Gods," she said from the corner of the room. "That moron is going to get five pilots killed and five birds destroyed for nothing. Lee, you have to stop him."

The meeting went on, Lee biting his lip to keep from responding to Starbuck's prompts.

"Lee, you know he's completely off his frakking rocker. Come on, be a CAG, hell, be a _man_!" In a flash, she wasn't in the corner of the room, but right beside him, yelling in his ear. "Major Adama, I request that you do your duty and put an end to this bullshit, _Sir_!"

"Starbuck, that's enough!" Lee shouted back.

Even before he finished shouting, he felt the appalled stares of the others. Lee looked around the room and saw shock, pity, and heartbreak staring back at him.

"Son...?" Adama began.

Lee left the room without excusing himself.

Starbuck appeared to him again in the corridor. "You shouldn't let Tigh get away with foisting his half-assed ideas on you and the Admiral. Especially not on this mission, it's too important."

Lee wanted desperately to argue with her; it was just like the old days (_The days when she was alive to be argued with_, Lee thought), but he fought hard not to say a word to the shadow of Kara that kept on haunting him. He couldn't help but throw her a murderous glare at one point, though, and that shut her up. Just as it had before. She disappeared.

_Fine, good, _Lee thought, but didn't feel it. He never really felt relieved when GhostKara left him, even now when he was furious with her. He was still frowning when he turned away from the empty spot she'd been and saw Gaius Baltar staring at him with a quizzical and alarmed expression on his face.

"Something you wanted, Doctor?" Lee asked in a tone that meant Frak off.

Baltar never had been great at picking up on Lee's signals. "Yes, actually, Major, I...This may be a very strange question," Baltar said, drawing close enough to Lee so that no one could readily hear their conversation, "but just now, were you...did you happen to...see, or...or hear someone who...wasn't...entirely, or, exactly...really there?"

Lee felt the breath go out of his body. _How did you know?_ he thought, but he didn't say it. Though he may as well have said it – the doctor's face registered comprehension and understanding.

Baltar said, "Was...The person you saw, or thought you saw...Was it a woman? Was she a...a lovely blonde, by any chance?" This last, he asked in a tortured whisper.

_Oh, what is this, another way to twist the knife in me over Kara?_ Lee thought with disgust. He'd never forgotten or forgiven Baltar over that Colonial Day incident. "You know perfectly well which lovely blonde I saw," Lee spat out. He started to stride away from the Doctor's distasteful mockery of him, but Baltar's next words stopped him.

"Ah – Starbuck. Yes, of course," Baltar said without a hint of antangonism. "That's...quite interesting."

"Interesting?" Lee asked Baltar over his shoulder. "Interesting in what way?"

"Well, of course, it could be your grief. Which I completely and totally understand, and my sympathies, naturally," added Baltar hastily. "Or...it could mean something very interesting about Starbuck." Baltar walked off, frowning as if in serious thought, and left Lee puzzled and annoyed.

The next time Starbuck appeared to him was the breaking point.

It was in a firefight. Lee managed to blow a raider apart just in time to fly through the wreckage and Starbuck's voice sounded clear as crystal in his comm: "Apollo, pull up hard, now, now, now!" Apollo did as Starbuck said – he knew better than to disobey her in a battle – and saw that he'd avoided crashing into another raider by inches. He flipped his ship around and shot the second raider out of the sky and Starbuck said, "Good shot, Apollo!"

"All thanks to you, Starbuck," he answered, high over the kill.

Then he remembered he was on an open channel.

When he got back into the hanger and out of his Viper, his father was waiting for him on the deck.

"I'm taking you off active duty," the Admiral said somberly. "You'll still be CAG, but no flying until..."

"Fine," Lee said, too embarrassed and angry at himself to protest. He thrust his helmet at Tyrol and marched back to his office without waiting for words of comfort and empathy to pour out of his father.

He waited for her to appear again. Waited for it and dreaded it.

It happened a few hours later. He was trying, and failing of course, to catch some sleep. He felt her arm drape over him from behind, her legs curl behind his legs. Her hair teased his ear and the side of his face; her voice, mesmerizing as always, murmured, "Sorry if I got you in trouble today, Major." Then she planted a kiss on his neck, bit his lobe just enough to get him hard in a flash.

He clambered out of the cot. He hoped when he was standing that when he turned back she would be gone, but he wasn't that lucky. He never was, when it came to her.

"Oh, come on," she said. She was only wearing her tanks and her panties. Her legs were bare, stretched out like that, her head propped up on her hand, a welcoming smile on her face. She looked sexy and seductive on his cot – Gods, he'd pictured her being there, just like that, a thousand times when she was alive. He'd jerked off more times than he could count to that very image. That was probably why his imagination conjured up this picture of her.

"You look so glum" she said. "I can fix that." When Lee didn't go any closer to her, her smile went away. "What is it?" she asked, concerned.

"You can't keep coming to me like this," Lee said. His voice was raspy. His heart was beating so fast – triple time. How could he be so ripped up about this, about breaking up with a ghost?

"Why not? Because of one slip-up? Okay, maybe two," she admitted, in that way Starbuck had of only admitting she might be wrong in the most grudging way.

Lee said nothing. She got up from the cot and came closer to him. When she would have embraced him, Lee stepped – more like stumbled – away from her.

"I, I mean it," he said haltingly. "This has, it has to stop."

"Are you serious?" she asked. When he met her eyes, it almost sent him to his knees to see that she was on the verge of tears. "Are you really sending me away?"

Lee looked down and told himself not to look in her eyes again. He nodded, deciding speech at this point would be too much to manage.

"Lee Adama, are you really turning me away when...when this is all we can have?" Oh Gods, Gods, there it was, that note in Kara's voice that made him want to kill whoever was hurting her. More often than not, though, that person was himself, and it was still true now, even though she was dead. "Lee, why? Why do you keep rejecting me?"

_Oh, Kara, I'm not, I could never reject you, I could never reject you when you were really here..._But even as Lee thought the words, he knew they weren't really true. Even though she'd never openly offered herself to him, there were a million ways in which she left the door open just a crack to him, and he'd always refused to walk through...

"You wouldn't let us be together when I was...before," she said, "and even now...even now you don't want me?" Her voice was very small, and wounded, like an injured animal...Gods, it was murder to hear.

"That's not it, that's not it," Lee said, unable to help himself from saying it aloud. "You never knew how much I wanted you...too much for our own good..."

"You never knew what was good for you, and certainly not what was good for me." Another bout of silence, then she said, "Fine. Fine. After this, you'll never see me again. I hope you'll be happy when you've gotten your wish."

_I wish for you to be alive... _"Kara," Lee said, his voice breaking. He thought he owed it to his own memory of her, if this was the last time he'd ever see even a ghost image of her before him, that he owed it to her to make this his final declaration to her: "Kara, I love you."

He looked at her and she'd never looked more devastated. The tears spilled out of her eyes as she said, "I don't see how that could possibly be true." Then she was gone. As if she'd never been there.

That was when Lee began to drink.


	4. Resurrection

A/N: Here it is: The big move away from angst! We get to see Real Kara again, yay! Thanks to everyone who is following.

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 4?

Author: abelard

Rating: M

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 4

No one could talk to him; no one even tried. Everyone on Galactica knew what they'd get if they tried speaking to the CAG on anything besides the most essential matters: a hard stare, a shrug, a slinking away of his gaze from yours. It had been like that for almost two months, but for the last week, ever since the Admiral grounded him, it had been worse. Now the CAG was drunk and they all knew it. And there was still no talking to him, and nothing they could do. He just seemed to be disappearing further and faster into his grief over Starbuck, and he wouldn't accept a lifeline if it were thrown to him.

For all those reasons, it surprised Helo when Apollo reached out to him one day.

"Did you ever frak her?" Apollo asked. Helo heard him over his shoulder in the bunkroom, turned and saw the once-proud, formerly well-groomed Major Adama slouching in the doorway. The Major obviously hadn't shaved in a week, since he was taken off Viper duty indefinitely. Helo wondered if he'd showered since then. He hoped so, since it appeared he was about to enter into conversation with the man.

"Did I ever frak who?" Helo asked.

"You know who," Apollo said. And Helo did. He also knew why Apollo was asking.

"Never," Helo answered honestly. "Not even when we were both so trashed we couldn't remember each other's names. We were always just friends."

Apollo stared at Helo for a few moments, as if assessing the truth of what the Lieutenant had just said. Seeming to be satisfied, Apollo said, "Okay. Come with me."

Helo didn't have shift for another three hours and had planned on getting some rack time and some visiting time with Sharon in there, but he guessed it wasn't meant to be. He and the CAG had never gotten along since Apollo held a gun to Sharon's head, but Starbuck had had some kind of soft spot for Apollo, and Helo figured he owed it to his dead friend to look after the man if given the chance.

Helo followed Apollo to an empty supply room and was surprised when Apollo produced a bottle of actual ambrosia – not just the rotgut Chief and his knuckle-draggers brewed up – from his pocket. "Amazing what you can still trade for," said the CAG. Helo thought with a surprising bit of remorse at how Apollo used to keep himself immaculate even under the worst of circumstances, how he used to put his uniform to rights even after hand-to-hand combat. Now Apollo was just...sloppy.

Apollo took a long, hard swig from the bottle, then handed it to Helo. "Here," he said. Apparently, Helo was about to get just as sloppy, with his superior officer's full knowledge and consent.

Well, hell, he deserved a good drink, they all did. Helo took a healthy gulp of the amber liquid and exhaled afterwards. Damn, but that felt good. He handed the bottle back.

"Now, talk," said the CAG.

"Look, Major...," Helo started, unsure of what was expected of him.

"I'm Lee. And you're Karl. I'll forget who your girlfriend is if you just...talk to me. I can't listen to myself anymore, I'm driving myself crazy."

Karl nodded. "Too many voices talking at you?" he guessed.

Lee shook his head vigorously. "Too few. Too few voices. It's damn quiet in here. The silence is killing me."

After that cryptic statement, Karl decided it was just better to keep Apollo company than leave him alone. _This is for you, Kara, _thought Karl. "Okay, I'll talk." He slid down till he sat on the cold floor of the supply closet; Lee did the same against the opposite wall. "Do you want me to talk about Starbuck, or not talk about her?"

"I don't know," Lee said. "I don't know if there's a right answer to that."

Gods, but the CAG was in desperate straits. "Okay, I'll just talk, and you tell me if you want me to switch topics. How's that?"

Lee nodded.

Helo talked, and kept on talking, and they met up the next time they were both off-shift, and Helo talked some more. It went on like that for another week. Helo didn't know where Lee got all his booze. Sometimes it was the Chief's stuff, but other times it was the real thing. Apollo must have found something Tigh needed badly; that was the only stash of booze left on the whole ship, Karl thought. Karl drank some of it, but not half so much as Lee did. Mostly, he just talked and tried to make sure the Major was engaged, if even mildly. He tried to get Lee to talk, too, though that rarely worked.

One day, the Admiral summoned Helo to his private quarters. "How's he doing?" the Old Man asked.

"Sir..." Helo paused, wondering how to answer truthfully, without giving the Old Man cause for even more concern than he was already feeling over his son. "If there ever was an officer in need of shore leave, it's the Major," Helo said finally. "I just wish we had a way to give him some R&R, Sir."

Adama gave Helo a look that would have been a glower from any other officer, but Helo had served under the Old Man for years, now, and knew that look to be a hopeful one. "As a matter of fact, we may have just found a way, Lieutenant."

Helo dared a half-smile. "What do you mean, Sir?" he asked, knowing whatever Adama was going to say next, it would be good news.

"Apparently, we've stumbled onto a planet. With an oxygen atmosphere. Fit for human life."

"No sh—really, Sir?" Helo responded, avoiding profanity in front of the Admiral just barely.

"Not only that, but it appears there are a few thousand humans living there now," Adama said.

Helo let his half-smile grow into a full one. "Earth!" he exclaimed.

"No, not Earth," Adama replied, and Helo's joy collapsed just a little. "This planet has very little advanced technology, and hasn't discovered space travel yet. It's also very small, no more than four thousand inhabitants. We're assuming that Earth, being the thirteenth colony, will be more populated and more technologically developed."

"So if this isn't Earth, where did these people come from?" asked Helo.

"We're not sure. They could have splintered off centuries ago from the twelve colonies; perhaps their ancestors purposefully broke off contact with the rest of civilization and regressed their technology to go back to an earlier, simpler way of living," said the Admiral.

Helo had heard of such things happening. "Could be. Anyway," he said, "what does this have to do with your...with the CAG, Sir?"

"I'm going to send down several teams to investigate the planet undercover. I want them to blend in with the population, find out their history, their culture...and I want you and Apollo to be one of those teams." Adama said the last bit quite meaningfully.

"Ah, I see," Helo said. "We're going to be the team...without much of a mission."

"That's correct," the Admiral said. "I've noticed Lee lets you close to him these days. You're the only one. As you said, what he badly needs is rest and relaxation. I want you to take him down there, make sure he sees the ocean, the sun, and doesn't do any damage to himself. When our other ground teams have gathered enough intel, we'll call you and Apollo back."

Ocean. Sun. All of a sudden, Helo felt guilty that he'd actually enjoy this babysitting mission. "Aye aye, Sir. Thank you for this assignment, Sir."

"Thank _you_, Helo," said Adama. Helo was glad that, despite his involvement with a cylon – one who looked just like the model that had put two bullets in Adama – the admiral had never lost faith in him. "Lee just hasn't been himself since..."

"For your sake, Apollo's, and _hers_, Sir, I'll do my best with him," Helo said, saving the Admiral from having to say much more.

They saluted, and Helo exited.

Helo and Apollo boarded a raptor the next morning. They were one of six pairs. All the other teams carried intelligence-gathering equipment; not them. They only had their comms, the clothes on their backs, which they hoped would pass for local, and a few items that might be tradable. The other five teams fanned out immediately after the raptor landed, and Karl and Lee were on their own.

Lee admits the wind feels good against his skin. He hasn't felt wind since...since Kobol, and Kara was with him then to experience it.

Of course he wishes she were here now. He always wishes she were with him. How could she think that he doesn't want her..._But that wasn't her_, Lee has to remind himself. _That was a ghost_. Still, he feels like shit every time he remembers the tears on her face when he told her to go. He can't stand thinking that any incarnation of Kara would believe he doesn't need her desperately.

Since Kara's ghost stopped haunting him on the Galactica, Lee has stopped looking for her, but now he and Helo are on this tiny planet, seeing other humans they've never seen before, and Lee can't help but search for her in the crowd. They're in some kind of marketplace, and it's bustling with activity. People carrying baskets and filling them up with greens, root vegetables, fruits, bread.

"It's amazing how similar humans are everywhere," Helo says at Lee's right shoulder. "Except these ones are a millennia or two behind our times."

It's true; it's like stepping into a history book. Everyone wears the kind of clothing that Lee's seen in picture books from the middle times, long tunics and dresses that almost touch the ground. Simple, hardy fabrics that look handwoven. There aren't machines anywhere, at least not what Lee would call machines. Everything's made of wood and stone, and the only metal they've seen are knives.

These people haven't ever seen a battlestar, or a Cylon, or war on the scale of nuclear holocaust. They've never known what it is to watch an entire planet destroyed. They can't even comprehend that. Lee is glad for them, and he takes in the sight of children holding on to their mothers' hands, farmers selling their produce, with a kind of happiness – not happiness for himself, he's not sure he'll ever have that again, but a kind of joy for them, that they have this peaceful existence.

Lee's jostled slightly from behind; they've reached a busier, more crowded part of the marketplace. He sees a flash of gold amidst all the bobbing heads and automatically follows it with his eyes. It's strange, but he feels closer to her, feels her spirit or soul or essence, more strongly on this planet than he has since...since he last saw her ghost on the ship. He almost laughs at himself, thinking one of the women on this small, lost planet will bear any resemblance to her.

But there's something in the way the golden-haired woman walks. Her shoulders straight and back, she's got such a confident stride, and the color of her hair is almost exact, pulled back in a low ponytail that leaves some strands around the face. If only he could see her face. Starbuck would never wear a dress like that, of course, lilac-colored with long sleeves like that; Lee's never seen her in a dress except for the one time, long ago.

_Why doesn't she turn around?_ Lee wonders, and before he knows it his legs are moving. He's pushing through the crowd to keep that blonde head in his sights. _If only she'd stop and buy something_. Lee is mindful of whether the woman belongs to anyone, if a small boy comes and tugs on her skirt, or if a man puts a possessive arm around her, but no, the woman stays alone, shopping by herself among the various stalls, but never stopping at one.

Finally, at the stand that sells something like turnips, she halts, picks one up, half turns to view her finding in better light, and puts in the basket that hangs from her arm, and there, Lee can see her face.

_Gods, it can't be_. It can't be, but it is.

"Kara!" he shouts. "KARA!" he shouts again, with all his might. The crowd stills for just a moment; Lee sounded like a wild animal even to himself. Even she looks up at the crazed sound; their eyes meet. Those are her eyes, hazel with the edges of green, and that mouth, wide and expressive, and that face. _It's her it's her it's her_.

"Kara! Kara!" Lee pushes his way bodily, using more force than he should because he can't really control himself, and at last he reaches her, and he wasn't delusional and this isn't a dream. He's six inches from her and it's Kara, alive, alive!

"Kara," he pants, winded from his effort to get to her, from his amazement, his elation.

"Yes," she says, calmly, a very slight, but amused, smile on her face and in her eyes. "My name is Kara."


	5. Decision

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 5?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 5

"Yes," she says, calmly, a very slight, but amused, smile on her face and in her eyes. "My name is Kara."

Lee smiles back at her so widely he thinks his face might break, it's so unused to happiness.

Lee swallows. He feels his smile turn downward, his forehead start to frown. _Kara is dead_, he tells himself. _Kara is dead! This isn't her. When she died, I spent the entire night holding her cold hand._

He takes the hand of the woman in front of him and she lets him. Lee makes himself feel, consciously, how warm she is. _When I blink, this illusion will be gone, and this woman will not be Kara, will not be Starbuck._ The simple fact is, this woman is alive and Starbuck is not. Starbuck's hand was cold and dead and the hand in Lee's is pulsing with heat.

He blinks.

And again.

"Is something wrong?" she asks.

Lee reaches up the hand that isn't holding hers and wipes his eyes, but when that hand drops, the woman hasn't turned into someone else. It's still that face, that form, that he has loved for so long that he couldn't burn it out of his mind if he tried – and he admits to trying, over these last two weeks, trying to buy back his own sanity with alcohol-induced forgetfulness. It didn't work.

And now, it doesn't have to. Kara is right in front of him, puzzled and getting suspicious of him not saying anything. So he speaks.

"Kara," Lee breathes, "you're alive."

"Yes," she says, and now she's looking at him askance, like she doesn't know whether to trust him or not. Of course, he's acting like he's out of his mind, which he very well could be, so he doesn't blame her for being suspect.

"I'm alive," she continues, "and I can see that you're confused about whether that's a good thing or not."

"I'm not," Lee says abruptly. One thing he's going to make damn sure of, even if this is another ghost, is to make sure she never feels rejected or unwanted by him ever again. "I'm not confused. It's a good thing." He's still holding her hand, he realizes – _Gods, I'm touching her live flesh –_ and he squeezes her fingers, trying to communicate his gladness. He smiles at her; lets the rejoicing in his heart overcome the confusion in his mind, at least for the moment. "Your being alive is a very, very good thing. I was sure you were dead."

She inhales deeply and exhales. She doesn't remove her hand from his clasp, but she doesn't squeeze his back, either. "I thought so," she says.

"What do you mean?" Lee asks. She sounds just like Starbuck, on the verge of figuring something out.

"I mean, no one's shown up here looking for me. No family, nothing. I thought, maybe my people believe I'm dead. Maybe that's why they're not looking for me," she says.

"Wait, you mean you...?" Lee can't finish, he's trying to process too many things at once. Not the least of which is the fact that the woman he buried in space more than two months ago is breathing and blinking right in front of him. And they're still loosely holding hands.

"I don't remember anything. Except my name. I woke up in the woods outside this village – oh, Gods, it's been sixteen days now – and I didn't know how I got there, or where I'd come from, or _who_ I'd come from. But I remembered that my name is Kara, and I just had a feeling that if I had people, they'd search for me. I've made some friends here, they've been kind enough to help me out, give me a place to sleep. So, since I woke up two weeks ago, I've just been...waiting."

Two weeks. Sixteen days. Sixteen days ago, Lee told someone – something – who looked exactly like the woman talking to him now that he couldn't see her anymore. The thing disappeared, and that very day, this – Kara – showed up in a forest on a small inhabited planet that no one in the fleet knew existed.

_What the frak is going on?_ Lee is verging on panic.

"But you know me?" Kara asks. "I know you?"

Lee tugs her by the hand closer to him, into a strong embrace. She feels like Kara. He puts his nose against her hair. She smells like Kara. She's hugging him back. He's being held by her.

_It doesn't matter_, he decides. _I don't give a frak_.

"Yes, you know me. You know me," he says. "I'm Lee. I'm your friend."

She pulls back. She's pleased. She's been waiting to be recognized for more than two weeks, and here he is, giving her just what she wanted. It's one of the very few times in his life when Lee has felt that he is giving Kara exactly what she wants. He vows he's going to focus on that feeling, and replicate it, as much as possible from now on.

"So you thought I was dead, huh?" she asks, grinning without sarcasm or mischief. She's just happy. Happy to see him.

Gods, he is so happy to see her. "I thought you were dead," he says, and even as he says it, it feels like a nightmare falling away after a long, troubled sleep. Waking is so good, this reality is so much better than what he's been calling existence for months...

"Well, I'm not dead. Are you going to take me home now, wherever that is?" she asks with hope in her eyes.

"Apollo!" calls Helo. Lee vaguely recalls that when he started pushing through the crowd to get to Kara, he and Helo got separated. Lee turns and sees the lieutenant jogging towards him. Towards them – him and Kara. What will Helo say?

Then Lee has a sudden, certain realization in his gut that Helo will be the last person to say anything.

"Apollo...what...?" Helo sees her face. His eyes shift between Lee and Kara and he's the picture of confusion.

"I found her," Lee says calmly, smiling. "It's Kara."

"Hi," says Kara, a little shyly, and Lee makes the introductions.

"Kara, this is Karl. He's your friend, too."

"Hi Karl," she amends. And she steps nervously forward, gives Helo a quick hug.

"But," says Helo when she steps back, "it's...it's impossible."

"Nope!" Kara says brightly. "I'm not dead!" She reaches up and feels the back of her head for something. "I keep feeling around for a bump – I must have taken a pretty rough fall, to get a case of amnesia this bad. But I can't find any signs of an accident – I guess I have a hard head, huh?"

Lee laughs. "You have no idea."

"Are there any other people with you? People I would know?" Kara asks, looking over Lee's shoulder on her tiptoes.

Lee and Karl look at each other, and Lee knows they're both thinking of the ten other people on the planet from the Galactica. "No," Lee says quickly. "We're here alone."

"You're not from this village, right? I mean, _we're_ not from here, right? Because no one here knows me. And the other villages – my name's been sent to all three of them, and it seems like no one's heard of me in any of them," Kara says. "So, where are we from?"

Helo gives Lee a kind of desperate look, and Lee answers, "We're actually from a village that no one here's ever heard of. We come from a long way off, much farther than the four villages."

Lee almost hits Helo when Helo involuntarily looks skyward. Kara says, "Oh. We're from up there, then."

Lee swallows hard. He and Helo exchange worried glances.

"Up from the mountains, right?" Kara continues. Her gaze follows Helo's line of sight from a moment earlier and Lee sees what she thought Helo was seeing: the ridge of jagged-peaked mountains in the distance, a citadel of stone that effectively limits how far the human settlements can fan out. "Everyone says those mountains aren't fit for human life, but I knew, I just had this feeling, that a group of people could live at that altitude if they only had stronger shelters, better tools. So we must be that group, right?"

"Right," says Lee. He's concentrating fully on Kara's face, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Helo staring at him like he's crazy.

"Will we make the journey back today?" Kara asks eagerly.

"That journey's far too long and arduous to attempt today," Lee says. "We'll need some time to prepare for it. Karl and I will need to get some rest first, and try to re-supply, before we can consider a trip back." Lee knows he's not making any sense to Helo, but the Lieutenant isn't disputing anything he's saying, and for that he's grateful.

He just needs to buy them some time. Some time that he can spend with Kara.

Kara looks disappointed, then brightens. "Do you want to come to my place, then? It's not much, just a shack, really, but you can rest there. And we can talk. I want to learn all about you. Rediscover who you are, and all that!"

She sounds playful, but Lee doesn't when he says, "That's what I want, too. Yeah, let's go to your place."

It really is a shack. It's a two-room shed, built for storing ploughs or large tools, maybe, that probably wasn't used for years before Kara moved in. Kara tells the story: A couple of villagers took her in for a few days, but when it looked like no one was coming for her, they suggested she take over the abandoned shed, and helped get her set up. Lee looks around. A table, some chairs, a straw-filled mattress with some decent blankets, equipment to clean and cook and garden with, is all of Kara's existence. A few other villagers have donated a few clothes to her, tailored them to fit her. Someone has shown her how to bake bread for herself. The vendors at the market have been generously putting her bills on a kind of tab, "which I hope I'll be able to pay off, as soon as I figure out what kind of work I'm good for," Kara says ruefully, obviously embarrassed to have been living off of people's kindness for two weeks.

"You're good at cards," says Helo before he can stop himself, and Lee's glare shuts him up.

"We have some things we can trade, to get your debts paid," Lee says.

"But then I'll just owe you instead of them," Kara says, shrugging off the offer.

"You'll never owe me. I owe you my life already." Now it's Lee who's said too much, and Helo who's giving out the hard stare.

"What does that mean?" asks Kara, smiling and frowning at the same time.

Helo puts his pack down loudly enough to draw attention to himself. "So, where do I sleep? Got any extra blankets?"

The distraction works. Kara says, "I was thinking I'd go next door and ask my neighbors for their spare cots and blankets. Then we can put them in here," she says, gesturing to the space in front of the hearth, in the front room. "I sleep in the other room. Sorry to put you in the front, which gets draftier at night, but you'll have the fire to keep you warm, and for the neighbors' sake, I just can't have two handsome strangers sleeping in the same room as me!" she says, laughing a little.

"This'll work," Helo says. "I'll go ask the neighbors, if you like. I'll explain who we are – that we're friends of yours, from your, ah, your home village."

"Oh, no, I'll go...," Kara starts.

"He'll go," says Lee. "Stay and talk with me for a while." He tugs at her hand and she doesn't pull away. They've shared more casual touches in the last hour than they ever did when she was – when they were on Galactica. And she doesn't even know him.

Kara hesitates, but she must see the need in Lee's expression, because to Karl she says, "Okay, then, if you don't mind. It's the house to the left. Their names are Evie and Jonas."

Helo nods and leaves.

Kara and Lee sit in the chairs at her small, functional table and she says, "I have so many questions. About you, about myself."

"Is it okay if we talk about you first?" Lee asks. He doesn't know what he'll say when she starts asking her questions, and he wants to put that off for as long as he can. Besides, he really is curious, more than curious, to know about her life here, on this hidden, backward, unexpected little world.

"Sure, but there isn't much to tell," Kara says.

"Just tell me the ordinary things. What you do every day. What it's like for you here," Lee pleads softly.

Kara begins to describe her life, which is the only life she remembers. Lee is filled with something like nostalgic joy listening to her talk about it. What she tells him of is a world so far removed from the daily, fear-ridden grind of the Galactica, he can hardly believe it's real. Here, she doesn't operate vessels that can kill people. She doesn't spend sleepless nights wondering, worrying about dozens of pilots or thousands of civilians depending on her. She doesn't run from one emergency to the next, scraping together miracles with bits of wire and sheer adrenaline. And the people she's with here, these villagers, they don't spend every minute of their day trying to keep from collapsing from exhaustion, anxiety, malnutrition, madness.

She wakes up in the morning, she tells him, and stokes the dying embers of the fire in the hearth. She has to keep the fire burning even in the day, for as long she's home, because she refuses to wear a cloak indoors, and the place is damned cold. Next she gets some bread baking, which she's terrible at but she's getting slightly better, she thinks. Whatever she bakes is her main sustenance for the day. Next, she helps Evie and Jonas tend their garden, which isn't yielding enough produce for two people, let alone three, so Kara doesn't take any of their vegetables, even though they offer to share. "They do so much for me, the least I can do is keep my hands off of their food," she says. She figures she'll take her chances getting produce on loan from the marketplace, even though she's nervous about how she'll manage to pay her bills. She spends her day chopping firewood for the fire, and trying to help out the other villagers who've helped her by doing some manual labor for them, if there are things she can do. She's so unfamiliar with their implements and methods, she's not terribly useful, and she just _knows_ she was not meant to do the women's work, sewing and weaving and all of that. She plays with the children sometimes, which she enjoys, and at night, a neighbor or two will come by and talk for a bit about small matters, or invite her over to share a meal. She only goes if she senses the family can really afford to be so generous. Then she goes to bed, lying awake for a while imagining who she is, where she comes from, before falling asleep.

Lee understands this world has its own precariousness – food is scarce for some, and survival is a matter of physical work, of farming and milling and doing hard labor. But it's...peaceful. They don't live in a state of war. This is what it is to live in a world of peace.

"I like the sound of your life here," Lee says when she's finished talking.

She rolls her eyes. "It's not as idyllic as it sounds. If you had to really live it..."

"Maybe I'll get that chance," Lee says. "At least for the next few days, right?"

"Right," Kara says, looking at Lee with open curiosity.

Then Helo returns, bearing cots, blankets, and pillows.

After finishing off Kara's homemade bread, which tastes very good to the two men, who've been living on bad synthetic food for too long, Helo suggests he and Lee go for a short walk, familiarize themselves with the neighborhood. Kara says she'll set up their cots while they're gone. Lee's tempted to stay and watch Kara be domestic, but Helo is insistent, and they start walking.

Helo gets right to it without preamble. Lee acknowledges if Helo has ever been anything, it's direct.

"She was dead, and now she's not," Helo says.

"I know," Lee says.

"You know what it means, right?" asks Helo.

Apollo turns and faces him. "You're the last person to criticize me for making this decision, Lieutenant."

Helo assumes a slightly more military stance. "What exactly is the decision you've made, Major?" he asks.

"I've decided that we're not going to tell the Fleet that we've found Starbuck," says Lee, and he starts walking again, and so does Helo.

"Because...," Helo begins, but it's not a question. Lee can tell that Helo grasps the decision perfectly well, and just wants to hear Apollo say it aloud.

"Because you know better than anyone," Lee says, "what they'll do to her if they find out she's a Cylon."


	6. Resolve

I'm so, so, so sorry for the incredibly long delay. Thank you to everyone who is still interested in reading this. Please go back and read the previous parts if you've forgotten what this is all about.

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 6?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 6

"I've decided that we're not going to tell the Fleet that we've found Starbuck," says Lee, and he starts walking again, and so does Helo.

"Because...," Helo begins, but it's not a question. Lee can tell that Helo grasps the decision perfectly well, and just wants to hear Apollo say it aloud.

"Because you know better than anyone," Lee says, "what they'll do to her if they find out she's a Cylon."

Helo pauses, floored – although he'd been after the admission all along – that Lee has said it aloud. Lee stops when he notices Helo isn't walking beside him. There is a boulder by the side of the road, and Helo sits on it. Lee stands beside him. They look out onto the starlit fields that surrounded the village where they've found Kara's...reincarnation.

Ten, maybe twelve minutes later, Helo speaks again.

"It explains some things," he says.

Lee asks, "Like what?"

"Her talent for killing Cylons. She knew how they move, how they, how they _think_, by instinct. And that raider she figured out to operate even when she was oxygen-starved...it explains that, too."

Lee sighs and tilted his head back, looked at the half-dark moon. "I thought about that. Yeah, it explains some things."

"But _Starbuck_...?" asks Helo, still dumbstruck. "I mean, of all the people...for Starbuck to turn out to be a...?"

"Don't say it," Lee says quickly. "We're never going to use that word again, not here, and especially not in front of her. Clear?"

Helo hears the command in the Major's voice. "Clear," Helo responds. He agrees with the order not just because he's a good soldier, but because he recognizes the resolve in Lee's tone, his stance. Helo is all too familiar with that feeling of denial, and defiance. "Look," Helo says, "I understand."

Lee looks at Helo as if he's been caught in something. Helo shakes his head, remembers that Apollo and Starbuck were – nothing to each other. They'd never had a relationship. Helo had never heard either one say they had any affection for each other beyond what was strictly appropriate. In fact, there were times that Apollo and Starbuck famously disavowed any feeling for each other at all.

But these past two weeks, Helo spent hours in the CAG's company watching Apollo take long swims in streams of alcohol. And Helo came to understand that there was a deep current of emotion between his dead friend, Kara, and the Admiral's son, and he doesn't quite get how he missed it before. Of course, for months, he's been caught up in his own drama of Cylon love, so maybe he was just blind to the true nature of Starbuck and Apollo's non-relationship. Anyway, the fact that he himself is in love with is a Cylon is exactly why he understands the Major's situation now.

Lee is still looking surprised and guilty and Helo wants to put him at rest. "I understand how you feel. Better than probably anyone else could. I want you to know, I won't interfere and I won't tell the Fleet."

"Thanks, Helo," Lee says, his head dropping. From relief, or shame, or just plain exhaustion, Helo can't tell.

"But you need to think, now. You need to decide how this is going to go. I care about Kara a lot. She's my friend. And I don't care about her any less knowing what she is. But we can't take her back to Galactica. You know that."

"I do," Lee answers, nodding. He seems so certain, so confident. Helo can't figure out what Apollo has to be confident about.

"So, you're going to be all right with it?" Helo asks. "When we have to leave her behind?' Helo doesn't want to have to say goodbye to Kara again; Gods, it would be so great, so great to have Starbuck back on the ship, to spar with and confide in and drink with. All the friends Helo made before Kara are dead now. He would love to have her back. But...

"I'm not leaving her behind," says Lee, with surety.

Helo swallows, squints up at Apollo's resolute face. "What?"

"You're going back to Galactica without me. I'm staying here."

Helo's asleep in one of the cots that Kara set up in the back room, and Lee is hauling the other cot in his arms, trying to be as silent as possible as he moves into the front room, where Kara is asleep. He sets the cot down beside her mattress, but his foot catches on something and the cot makes a short slamming sound as it hits the floor.

"Wha – What is it?" Kara asks, a little bit frightened but too sleepy to be too alarmed.

Lee smiles and remembers how hard it is for Starbuck to wake from a deep sleep. She only ever slept lightly when they were on high alert, when the Cylons were coming every 33 minutes and no one slept anyway, or when they were on Kobol and nervous at every noise in the forest. Every other time someone tried to shake Starbuck awake...Gods help them.

Lee smiles even wider when he realizes, _I don't have to remember anymore. She's not a memory._

"Sorry," Lee whispers. "I, um." He doesn't have a good explanation, one that'll sound totally reasonable. He goes with the truth, which is completely unreasonable. "I can't sleep in the next room. I thought, if I could sleep here, where I can look at you..." That's as far as Lee's thoughts go. He just can't rest unless he can lay his eyes on her. He wants to look at her for a night and a day and maybe another night before he closes his eyes again.

Kara frowns, confused, and blinks, still half-asleep, and murmurs, "Sure. Okay."

Lee thinks she probably thinks he's crazy, and thinks briefly of all the years it's been the other way around with them.

"Sorry," Lee says again and lies down on the cot, drawing the wool blanket up around his bare shoulders.

"You're handsome," Kara says suddenly.

Lee gasps in shock. She's never said that before. Lee has always hoped she found him good-looking, and to hear that she does is... Lee shuts down the thought, ashamed of his vanity and his pleasure at her remark. Before he can say anything, Kara speaks again.

"Were we...I mean, what were we before..." Kara huffs, frustrated. "What am I to you?" she asks.

Lee laughs. What is she to him? It's the question that has dogged him like a snarling, raging, hungry beast since the moment they met.

"What's so funny?" Kara asks, defensive.

"Nothing, I mean..."

"I didn't mean to insult you by implying..." She huffs again, this time in anger, and turns around, facing away from him.

Lee reaches out a hand but can't reach her. His turn to be frustrated now. Touching her will only scare her, though, so he drops his hand back to his cot and says, "It's not that. Believe me. It's just that, our relationship, I mean, what we are to each other, is a long, long story. Rest tonight. I'll tell you about us tomorrow."

After a moment, Kara turns back around, seemingly placated. "Okay," she says, and she's obviously tired from the day, too tired to demand answers now. "Can't you just give me the short answer for now?" she asks, her lids coming down over her hazel-green eyes.

Lee stares at her face and says, low and quiet, "You're the person that I can never, ever have."

Whether she's really asleep or not, she doesn't respond to that.


	7. Typical

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 7?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 7

Lee spends most of the night just watching Kara as she dreams, but the exhaustion catches up with him – he hasn't gotten any real sleep for weeks now – and he loses his battle to keep his eyes open, on Kara, at last. When he wakes up, dawn is just breaking and she is still asleep, and he watches as the barest pink glow enters the room and drapes her face and blanket-covered body in a very slight blush.

Lee has not felt this content in years. Since before Zak introduced him to her. He hasn't been truly at peace since he's known Kara Thrace, and it's almost fitting that they had to go through not just the end of the worlds, but death, too, in order to finally get things right, find somewhere, some way, to settle.

Lee knows he is staying. Whatever Kara is, he is staying with her. If he'd been asked three months before, when she was still alive on Galactica, if he'd break off contact with the Fleet, his father, and everyone he knew in order to make a life with Starbuck on some remote planet, he's not sure he would have said yes. But even then, he would have been tempted. He would have seriously considered it. He loved her then, most of the time at a level just beneath consciousness. But now, now that he's lived all of these weeks believing her dead, now he can be certain. Where she is, he'll stay, if she'll let him.

Helo creeps into the room, trying to be quiet, and Lee sees he's already dressed. Helo motions to him to follow, and Lee does. They stand outside Kara's little hut as the sun's rays become visible over the eastern mountains.

Helo is frowning and not looking at Apollo; Lee has learned enough about him in the past couple of weeks to know when Helo's disturbed.

"I've been thinking," Helo begins. "I'll have to tell him – the Admiral, I mean – I'll have to tell him you're dead."

Apollo has an image of his father, grieving, believing he's lost not just Zak and Kara, but now Lee, too. He knows it won't kill the Old Man, but it'll be a close thing. "No," Apollo says. He can't put his father through that. "No, there has to be another story you can give them."

"Look, I don't want to put your father through this, but if you're determined to stay here permanently, then you have to make sure he won't come down here looking for you. If he thinks there's a chance in Hades you're alive..."

"...he won't leave me behind," Lee finishes. _Frak_. For a long time, when he was a boy, Lee wondered if his father really loved him. Now he knows how much his father loves him, and though he's ashamed to think it, he wishes his father loved him a little bit less. Wishes his father were the kind of man who'd let a lost cause go.

But that's not what Adamas do. They don't let lost causes go.

Lee says, "I can't do that to him."

Helo says, "Then I can't leave you behind."

"Somebody's leaving?" Kara asks from the doorway, her blanket wrapped around her like a shawl and her hair a mess. Lee feels something in the region of his heart unclench at the sight of her. Kara looks from Lee to Helo and says, "I'm glad I heard you guys out here. When I first got up, I thought I just imagined you two. Is one of you leaving already? Can I go with you?" she asks with wide, eager eyes.

Lee remembers he told Kara that they had to get supplies, re-stock for the trip home, to their "home village" in the mountains. She was so anxious to get back, to whatever her life was. But Lee knows she can never make that trip.

"Helo – I mean, Karl's going back home today. But you and I aren't going with him," Lee says.

"What?" Helo asks sharply. "I thought you just said..."

"You can leave me here for a little while," says Lee. "Just tell my father I...I _need_ to be here right now. Tell him I'm recuperating here. Tell him you'll come back for me in a..." Lee looks at Kara and wonders how much time with her will be...enough. A month? Two? A year? There really isn't any length of time that will be enough, when he'll be happy to leave her behind. But he can't subject her to what the Sharon model's been through on Galactica, either. "Tell him you'll come back for me eventually."

"He'll never go for that," Helo scoffs. "Plus, we need you. Who'll do your job?"

"Please," says Lee, shaking his head. "I've been useless for months." A sudden inspiration strikes, and Lee places his hand on Helo's shoulder. "And you can do my job."

"Me?" Helo's voice escalates an octave, almost to a squeak.

"Haven't you been mostly doing it anyway? Look, we're finally in a good place with personnel. You've got the people you need, and they're trained. You can do this."

"I don't want to be any trouble," says Kara, still looking on. "If you need to get back, then you should go. Although, why can't we all go together?"

Again, there's that wanting to return home, and Lee sees this could be a long-running battle between them. Lee has to put a stop to that line of questioning now, and he knows a little bit of the truth will do it. He goes up to Kara and puts his hands on her shoulders. Her face registers doubt and surprise, she takes a step back, shaking off his hold. Lee reminds himself that she doesn't know him, that as far as her memories go, she just met him yesterday.

"I'm sorry," Lee says. "But I need to explain to you why we all can't go back home together. Can we talk inside?" He doesn't want the neighbors hearing anything he's about to say.

Kara frowns slightly at Lee. "You're bossy," she remarks, not teasingly, and Lee is chagrined to realize he's been using his CAG tone with her. She never did respond well to that tone.

Helo steps forward. "He's right, Kara," he says gently. "Let's take this inside."

Helo enters the dwelling and Kara, with a last suspicious look at Lee, follows him to the table inside. Once again, for the thousandth time in his life, Lee is jealous at Helo and Starbuck's easy friendship. Even now, when Kara doesn't know either of them, she trusts Helo more than him, on instinct. _Or programming_, Lee thinks for a split second before squashing that thought down.

Lee sees Helo and Kara sitting next to each other and senses the lack of stress between them. The absence of friction. Lee thinks maybe part of the reason he disliked their friendship was that it was exactly the relationship _he_ should have had with Kara, if only they'd really been friends. Or brother and sister. They should have been able to talk, spar, argue, joke, wrestle, interact with simplicity and familiarity. But instead, they'd never been simple. Sometimes, they'd fought being too comfortable with each other, as if they feared that if they let their guard down for a second, they'd fall into each other's arms, each other's bed. And sometimes they just pushed and pulled at each other because they couldn't stand the fact that they were so close and yet could never be together. Even the two times they'd frakked before Starbuck's final flight had started out as arguments, and the sex hadn't brought them closer together. There was too much of the past between them, and too much war. Guilt, duty, sadness – even when their bodies met each other's in perfect harmony, or when their Vipers sailed through space together like they were really two wings of one bird – there had always been too much between them to allow them to be simple with one another.

That has to change now, Lee vows. And without Kara's memories to fill her with rage and guilt and loss and fear, they can have their chance. Lee only has to...well, he only has to accept the fact that she isn't really human. And accept that he has to give up his life on Galactica, his father, and his responsibilities for her.

_Ah Kara..._Lee lets out a frustrated breath and runs his hand through his hair. _The things you make me do..._

And yet, doesn't he always do them?

"I don't want to be the reason," Kara says, seriously, looking straight at Lee, and he wonders momentarily if she has some kind of Cylon telepathy that allows her to read his mind. "I don't want to be the only reason you're staying," she says. "If you want to go, then go. And if you think I'm not strong enough to come with you, let me prove you wrong. I know I must have taken a fall, to have amnesia this bad, but I feel good. I'm tough, I can make it..."

"I know how tough you are, Kara," Lee says, and thinking of all the times Starbuck has proven herself to be the bravest, luckiest goddamn soldier in existence, he almost cries, and almost laughs, simultaneously. "You don't have to prove that to me or Karl. But there's something you should know. Why we can't take you back with us."

Kara swallows. "Okay," she says. "Why?"

Lee says, "If we take you back, everyone on...everyone at home will think you're...bad. They'll, um, they'll chain you up, and they won't ever let you be free again."

"They think I'm a criminal?" Kara asks, horrified.

"They don't think that yet," says Lee. "Right now, everyone believes you died a couple of months ago. But if you come back home, and they see you're not dead..." Lee has no words to explain. He beseeches Helo with his eyes.

Helo comes up with the words. "If you come back alive, when everyone thinks you should be dead, they'll think you're a witch, Kara."

Kara gasps. She pulls her blanket tighter around her. "Here, people have told me that they burn witches."

Helo nods slowly. "They'll think they have a right to. It's not fair. But that's what they'll think. Because they'll think you have some kind of power that they don't. And they'll fear you, even if you tell them they're on their side."

"But can't we convince them?" Kara pleads. "I mean, look at me, I don't have any magic, I can barely bake my own bread..."

"Karl's...wife," Lee starts, not able to think of another word to describe what Sharon is to Helo, "stands accused of being a witch. And she's still locked up, even though she's just had Karl's baby."

Kara looks to Helo for verification. The tears in his eyes are testimony enough. "I'm only allowed to hold my daughter once a day, if I'm lucky."

"Gods..." Kara whispers, laying a hand on Helo's forearm.

"There's no convincing them, Kara. Once they suspect. I've tried for months," Helo says, his voice breaking on his last words.

They sit silently for a few moments. Then Kara says, "So...I can never go back?"

Karl says, "Believe me, I wish you could. We've missed you." He wipes his tears and smiles at her, and Kara smiles back, and Lee sees again how uncomplicated it is between them, between two people who are just friends.

That's not Lee, though. "I won't leave you here alone," he says. "I'm staying."

Kara frowns again at him. Helo has gotten all of her smiles today, and Lee has earned all of her frowns. "Why?" she asks. "I mean, I appreciate the offer, but I've been taking care of myself since I got here. I think I can manage on my own."

Ah, Lee knows this Kara. Defiant Kara. Don't-need-anyone-especially-not-you-Apollo Kara.

"I've been waiting for people who know me to show up," Kara goes on, "but now that you're here, you're telling me I have nothing to go back to. So why should you have to give up your home, too?"

"He can't give it up forever," Helo says, and Lee knows it's for his benefit. Helo is trying to remind him this is all just temporary. "He'll have to come back eventually."

"But not for a while," Lee says, looking at Helo pointedly. "Not for months."

"Weeks, maybe," Helo counters, returning Lee's stare.

"But why would you have to give it up at all?" Kara asks. "Like I said, I appreciate it, but I don't need you. And I don't want to be responsible for taking you away from your...your wife, or whoever you have back there..."

Lee feels the crease between his eyebrows that only comes out when he is arguing with Starbuck. "I'm staying," he says. "That's final."

"But why?" Kara asks again. "What would be the point?"

"You. You're the point. I need to be with you, all right? Gods, you've never gotten that, and when I tell you, you never believe me!" Lee stops short. He realizes he was just yelling. _The things you make me do..._he thinks.

Kara is so still, and it makes Lee nervous whenever she is that still. Lee thinks this is so typical. Here they are, after she's died and come back a Cylon and he's ready to give up everything for her except he can't, not permanently, and she doesn't even want him to in the first place, and so they're fighting. Again. So typical.

Lee hates this as much as he always has, but more than that, he's missed it.

Kara says, "You're bossy." But this time she says it like a tease, and sticks her tongue out at him for good measure, and then smiles.


	8. Realization

Thank you very much to all who are reading and reviewing! You definitely motivate me to write more. So sorry for the delay. In this part, we finally get to hear Kara's pov. I was missing her inner voice.

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 8?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 8

The taller one, Karl, she's more at home with, and she almost regrets that he's the one leaving. She can tell they were friends for a long time, before. She feels like...almost like a sister to him, somehow, and if only they had a few hours together, she could ask him questions about where they come from, what she was like, the people in her life. She just has a sense that Karl would give her straight answers.

She could ask Karl about the other one, Lee, for example. She has a lot of questions about him. She's asked a few of them out loud. What is she to him? Why is he staying behind, why isn't he going to their home village with Karl? The answers Lee gives her are confusing and vague and all his words hide other words, words he doesn't want to say, she can tell.

Still, she's drawn to Lee, and although a part of her wishes Karl could stay, or wishes she could go back with him (_if only there was half a chance they wouldn't burn me at the stake_, she reminds herself), she knows it's better if Lee's the one who remains. He'll be the harder nut to crack, and Kara doesn't remember anything about her life before two weeks ago, but she knows that she never liked doing anything the easy way.

Karl and Lee are talking outside, and Kara's been finishing up her morning rituals, baking bread and going to the well in the back of the hut, the one her neighbors allow her to draw from, to get enough water for the day. Kara's caught a few of the men's words. Words like "ship" – but how do their people sail in the mountains? And Karl says once he's "sent a message over my comm," and what does that mean? And then these strange names they call each other, "Helo" and "Apollo." Are those their family names? Kara's never heard names like that around this village, although of course everyone knows Apollo is the name of a god.

She smirks to herself. _No way is that Lee guy a god. Though he might think he is._ Then her smirk fades as an image of his hard, muscled torso and arms comes into her mind. _Okay, so what if he looks like one..._

The men come inside and she can tell that it's time to say goodbye to Karl. She goes to him and embraces him tightly, and he hugs her right back, and she can feel Lee stare at them with...anger? Envy? He's a strange one. When Kara pulls back, Karl holds her hands.

"It hasn't been easy without you," Karl says.

"I'm sad to see you go," Kara answers. "I wish I remembered you."

"When your...memories...start to...come back," Karl says, and Kara wonders why he hesitates to talk about her memories, "try to only dredge up the good ones about me, all right? Forget about any unsavory recollections you might have, especially if they're about too much ambrosia and games involving weapons."

Kara laughs and Karl smiles. "Take care. I hope to see you again someday," she says.

"I'll see you again," Karl says, and he looks as if the thought causes him pleasure, but also some pain. "Somehow. I know it. Maybe you'll remember me then."

He sounds strange, and Kara realizes that this man, so obviously her friend, also has his secrets and silences. Then Karl and Lee shake hands and embrace in that way men have, of showing affection without getting too close, and then Karl is off.

"He'll be okay on his own?" Kara asks.

Lee says, "He's joining up with others, from our, our village. They'll all go back together."

"There are others?" Kara can't believe Lee didn't tell her before. "Can I see them? Meet them?"

Lee looks at her and shakes his head. Whatever she asks him, the answer is always no. It's driving her crazy.

"They'll think what everyone back home will think," Lee answers.

"That I'm..." Kara really doesn't want to say it.

"Yes. That you're...that you deserve to be locked away. Or worse." Lee's eyes, which Kara has already noticed are usually an incredibly bright blue, turn to smoke when he talks about what might happen to her if she tries to go home.

"Why don't you and Karl think that way about me?" Kara asks. It's another way of asking what she is to him; maybe if she throws Karl into the question, he'll give her an answer.

Lee gives that sigh-and-huff thing that she's also grown to dislike. It means he's holding back from her. She doesn't want to be lied to. She senses, though, he's not exactly lying to her; but he's being careful in his phrasing, he's presenting facts in a certain way. If only she remembered more, she could see through the parts that are bullshit. Damn her amnesia. She has a feeling that being at any disadvantage with respect to Lee is something she hates.

Lee says, "Karl is your friend, as you can tell. And his...Sharon, he's seen what our people have done to her. He doesn't want that to happen to anyone else he cares about. As for me... Why don't we go someplace we can talk, and I'll tell you about our past."

Finally. "Good," Kara says. "I want to hear about that. I know a place."

She brings him to the lake east of the village, away from the ocean, closer to the mountains. Kara has come here a handful of times by herself, to think. Even though she has plenty of time to herself in her miniature cottage, she likes it better out here, in the open, with the wild grass and the stones and the water and the sky.

And now this place isn't entirely hers anymore. She's brought this strange man, Lee. She feels as if she should mind that she's given up her private thinking spot, but she looks over at the intruder, his sharp blue eyes and troubled face, the way the muscles around his shoulders and upper back are so well-formed but look hunched up slightly, as if he's not been sleeping or even lying down properly, and the way he looks at her, so hopeful, tired, and anxious all at once. And she realizes that wherever in her life she might bring this man, he has some kind of right to be. She doesn't know why, but he's no intruder.

"I like to sit here," she says, picking an even patch of grass in the sun and plunking down. Lee sits down beside her and they stare out onto the water together. She waits for him to say something, to begin, but he doesn't so she does. She guesses she is not a patient person.

"Last night, I asked you a question," she says. "And as I was falling asleep, you answered."

Lee nods, and his shoulders get a little tighter, in, what? Defeat? "You asked what you are to me, and I said you're the person I can never have," he says.

So she wasn't dreaming. "What does that mean?"

Lee squints up at the sky momentarily, and Kara knows he is trying to avoid looking at her. He says, "My younger brother introduced me to you. You two were in love. You were betrothed to him."

Kara gasps. "I'm your brother's wife?"

Lee shakes his head. "No. He died in a terrible accident before the marriage, even before he could tell our parents about you. I was the only one who'd met you, the only one who knew about your intentions..."

Kara senses the pain in him, over his lost brother, and she feels the echo of it in her own gut. Or is that only empathy, and not the ghost of a memory of her own sorrow?

"So...," Kara says, wishing she were not hopeful in the guess, "I'm not your family?"

Lee smiles abruptly. "Yes, you are. You are my family. You're like a daughter to my father. And for me..." Kara notices that he still isn't looking at her. He's still glancing at the blue sky, out at the blue lake. "If you aren't my family, I don't know who is."

Kara puzzles over what that means. "If you think of me like a sister, then what you said last night..."

"You're my family. That doesn't mean..." Lee pulls a handful of grass out of the ground in frustration.

"You don't think of me as a sister?" Kara asks cautiously.

Lee says, "In many ways, we're more like twins. Opposites, but counterparts. Artemis...and Apollo."

_Apollo_...there's that name again. For the hundredth time, Kara wonders what it means.

"You're not making any sense," she says. "I was your brother's intended and he died. I'm not a part of your family, but you say I am. Last night you said you could never have me. But how have you wanted me?"

"There isn't any way I haven't wanted you," Lee says so quietly, Kara has to lean forward to catch his words. Even when she realizes what he's said, she can't quite make sense of them.

"What are you saying, Lee? I'm tired of asking you to explain," she says and she tries to convey with the very timbre of her voice how serious she is.

"I'm saying...," He turns and faces her for the first time since she brought him out here, and she frowns at the tears in his eyes. "I'm saying that I was never allowed to feel for you what I feel. Because of my brother, because you felt guilty over him and so did I, and then because...we both worked for my father and it wasn't...it was just never right. And then because you died. You died, Kara," he says, his voice breaking. "And I thought, wherever you went, maybe you were with Zak. And I thought, even when I die," and now the tears fall from his eyes freely, "even when I'm dead, she won't be mine. She'll be Zak's. And I'll never have my chance, not for all eternity..."

Kara feels her frown deepen, and his sadness fills her heart. She puts her hand over his. "Oh," she whispers.

Lee says, "I've been trying to fall out of love with you, Kara. I've been trying since I met you, and it's never going to happen. Your death didn't make it happen. Now that I've found you alive, I don't care everything that happened before, and I don't care what you are. But other people are going to care, and so you have to stay here, and be safe, while I might have to go back, probably _will_ have to go back, and so even now, after everything...I still can't have you. I can never have you. And all my wanting, years of it, and more desperation than I hope you ever know...it comes to nothing. You're the person I can never have."

He is so distraught that she can't help but take his hand in his and hold it tightly. He turns away from her again and scrubs at his face with his sleeve. She sees immediately – or remembers? – that he despises showing weakness, even, maybe especially, to her.

"I can't believe it never occurred to you," Kara says.

"What?" Lee asks, turning back abruptly despite the fact that his eyes are still bright with tears.

"I can't believe you've never realized that if I'm the person you can never have, that that means I've never been able to have you, either."

Lee looks at her, stunned and silent.

Kara huffs and shakes her head at the density of this man. "Don't you understand that you've probably been just as lost to me as I've been to you? I don't even _know_ you, and I've only heard about ten sentences – and damned confusing ones, too – about our history, and even _I_ can figure out that you haven't been the only one suffering here, you know."

Kara didn't say it to be funny, but nevertheless, Lee looks to the blue sky, closes his blue eyes, and laughs and laughs.


	9. Touch

Thank you again for following this story! We're still with Kara's pov in this one.

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 9?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 9

Over the course of the next week, Kara's life changes so rapidly she's not sure what's happening half the time, except that she _gets_ it all and it's amazing to be good at things she has no memory of knowing.

On their walk back from the lake, Lee tells her, "It's time you learned a trade, something you can do to earn your keep here."

"I can't agree more," Kara says. "It's just that there's nothing I've tried that I'm any good at. It's obvious I'm not a farmer, or a blacksmith, or a cobbler, or a cook, and as for the sewing and weaving, ha, you might as well tie my hands behind my back for all the good I do with needles and threads..."

"You're a fair engineer," Lee says.

"What's an 'engineer?'" Kara asks.

Lee smiles and says, "I'll show you as soon as we get back to the cottage." Kara is confused but likes the way he smiles, like not only does he have a secret, but it's a secret he knows she'll like.

They stop off at Kara's neighbors, and Lee introduces himself as a friend of Kara's from her village, and Jonas and Evie are pleased and surprised to hear that Kara _has_ a home (or _had_, anyway, Kara thinks grimly), but before they can ask Lee questions about where is this village they've never heard of, Lee asks for parchment and ink and takes the writing equipment and goes back to Kara's cottage with an excited step. Kara, hardly comprehending what he needs such rarities as ink and paper for, can do nothing but shrug at her kind neighbors and follow Lee back.

He's sitting at her small table and making some markings that Kara doesn't understand. Then she does, at least vaguely. The picture looks familiar. "What is that?" she asks.

"It's a hydraulic circuit," Lee says, beaming. "Why don't _you_ tell me what the parts are?"

Kara laughs nervously. "How would I know what they are?" It's just a bunch of funny looking shapes, straight edges and curves and arrows.

Lee points to the shape at the top, a long rectangle curved at one end, with what looks like a pole sticking out of the other end. "Let's start here. What's this?"

Kara says nothing, then words escape her mouth before she can even _think_ them. "A hydraulic cylinder?" She closes her mouth abruptly and can't believe what she just said. She asked it like a question, but really she was questioning herself, questioning _how could she possibly know_?

"Good. Good!" Lee says. Kara feels her pride in her and wants to feel it again, so she concentrates on the picture and wills the names of the parts to come to mind.

"What about this?" asks Lee.

"The control...control valve," Kara says, her voice steadier this time.

"And these here?"

"That's the, um, the pump, and next to it is, ah, the...the filter?"

"Kara, you've got it. Just one more, I know you know it. This thing here?" Lee is smiling so widely Kara can't help but smile back, even though she doesn't know what this is all about.

"That's called the reservoir," she says.

"Exactly," says Lee. "You do remember." Then he frowns. "Do you remember anything else right now?"

Kara thinks, searches her mind for any jostled memories that might be floating through it. Nope. Blank as usual. "No, nothing else."

The worried look leaves Lee's face. "Okay. Then let's focus on this. It's a hydraulic circuit. You know how it works, and you know what it does. And what it _can_ do."

"What can it do?" Kara asks a little breathlessly. This feels like something she shouldn't know. She's never seen one of these...circuit things in this village. She wonders if maybe Lee is a warlock, just as she is a witch. It seems like he's teaching her some powerful magic.

"A lot of things. Mostly, it can power machinery...I mean, it can move...big things, and have them do big jobs," Lee says.

"I don't understand," says Kara. "Do you mean, like what the mules and oxen do?"

"Not exactly," says Lee. "Given this environment," and again that's a word Kara's never heard anyone around here use, "hydraulic power will be more useful for lifting heavy materials and transporting them from one place to another. That sort of thing. Of course, without engines, we'll have to use manpower to operate the pump, but it'll still make work a lot more efficient around here." There are a lot of words in that sentence Kara doesn't understand at all.

"But how can we make one of these?" she asks, not wanting to betray her ignorance, even though Lee clearly knows she doesn't remember a lot. She still doesn't want to give him any unnecessary advantages over her. He's said he loves her, but still, something inside warns her to be strong in front of him, as strong as she can manage, anyway.

"We'll find the right materials. And once you learn how to make them and apply them for different kinds of jobs, you'll never lack for food or comforts, I guarantee you." He sounds so confident that Kara decides he must be right, although everything he's said in the last ten minutes sounds completely crazy.

Over the next seven days, though, what seems crazy turns out to be eminently achievable. Lee keeps calling their work "jerry-rigged" and Kara doesn't know what that means and doesn't ask, again not wanting to emphasize her ignorance anytime she can help it, They're using all kinds of materials, mixing all manner of gummy residues and pastes together to form what Lee calls "plastics," and creating, amazingly enough, what Lee calls a "machine." It's mostly a wooden frame and it's lumbering and slow, and it looks like a large animal that men are supposed to ride, and men _do_ ride it, on a small perch they built inside, doing what Lee calls "driving," and when three men take turns working "the pump" on it, it can actually scoop up large amounts of earth, and turn just slightly to the side, and dump the earth out, creating one increasingly deep hole and one increasingly deep pile.

No one knows what this beast is that Kara and Lee have built, but they immediately see the benefit of a thing that can dig ditches quickly, and although Lee keeps complaining about its "lack of maneuverability," everyone likes it and, by extension, appreciates Kara more.

"I'll stay until you know how to build more of those, different kinds, and you'll have your livelihood set," Lee says one night, stripping his shirt off and using a piece of cloth and a basin of water to wash down with, since it's too late and too cold to bathe in the stream.

Kara tries to look away from his naked back and finds she cannot. Has she always been this fascinated by his body? Probably. It's a remarkable body.

"You'll stay until then," she repeats. "And then you'll go back? To wherever we come from?"

Lee says nothing, and Kara doesn't press the issue.

Working with Lee is easy. She knows things she doesn't know she knows, about things she doesn't know, and half the time she makes suggestions or criticizes Lee's methods without knowing quite what she is saying but knowing absolutely that she is _right_, and Lee takes turns being annoyed and pissed (especially when she is _right_) and in good spirits because "It's familiar," he says. "This is you always are when we work together."

They must have worked together a lot, Kara thinks, because it is so simple and smooth – fluid, a word she's learned/remembered from working on hydraulics – and even when they disagree it only makes the end result better, stronger, and working with Lee is a pleasure even when it's very, very difficult.

But what's hard is the nights.

He still sleeps in her room, though the back room is now empty since Karl vacated it. He sleeps on his cot separated from her mattress by the thinnest of distances, just a few inches of open space that might as well be a yawning gulf, for all the longing looks he throws her way when he thinks she's sleeping. Even with her eyes closed, she can feel him staring at her. Briefly, every now and then, she opens her eyes a slit's width in the dark and sees that he's staring not just with want, but with actual sadness. Desolation.

On the seventh night since after that day at the lake, that day he told her that he loves her, that he's loved her for a long time, she asks him a question related to that supposed fact. She's been too afraid, too uncertain, to probe the territory of his emotions before. She has a feeling that she never did get much practice at that.

In the cover of darkness, with the courage of the half-asleep, she whispers across the inches-wide chasm, "You never try to touch me."

Sure, his hand has brushed hers innumerable times as they've built the machine, as they've handed different things back and forth, and he's reached for her back and given her a couple of quick hugs, and she has found herself initiating almost as much contact as he – and so a case could be made that they can't help _but_ touch each other, seemingly – but what she means is, he has never tried to touch her the way a man who loves a woman tries to touch that woman. And she wonders why that is.

"I was never allowed to touch you," he says. "My brother..."

He doesn't say anything more, and he doesn't have to. Kara doesn't remember, but she can imagine how Lee must have felt, being...attracted to his brother's betrothed, what a terrible position to be in.

"Lee," Kara says, and in the moonlight she can make out how he swallows at her saying his name like that, in her drowsy voice, "did we ever...after Zak died, did you and I ever...?"

"Yes," Lee says, surprising her. She was thinking the answer must be no, because how can he look at her so hopelessly if he's already _had_ her? "Twice," Lee says, and she watches him squeeze his eyes shut as if trying to get rid of the memories even as he remembers. "Both times, we were angry, and...and drunk. They were...over with quickly. Too quickly," he adds, and she wonders if he's commenting on his own performance. "And we couldn't get away from each other fast enough."

That's the story he tells, but Kara can hear another story lurking underneath, unsaid. Despite the bleak and somewhat heartless picture Lee paints, what she sees in her mind's eye are two encounters suffused with unvoiced passion and need and made brief only because of denial, two people's denial forming a double orbit, like twin stars. She can envision the looks he must have given her when she wasn't looking, the way she looked at him when he had his back turned.

_His back turned..._Was that what she was thinking of when she couldn't turn her gaze away from his back?

Having amnesia is confusing and wretched, she thinks for the millionth time. You don't know what's real and what's invented.

"I'm sure I wanted to touch you more," Kara says. "More than I did," she clarifies, though she doesn't know how else he could interpret her statement.

"Really?" Lee asks with a small huff of laughter. He doesn't believe her. "I wish you remembered wanting that, so you could tell me about it."

Wow. Does this godlike man, he of the perfect form and face, really think she didn't want him, _ever_? Kara can't vouch for love, although she almost thinks she can...but as for want, that's a very easy deduction to make, Yes, she's positive she wanted to touch him, and so it's easy to admit what she's thinking.

"I want to touch you now," she says in the dark, and she can hear Lee's breath stop.

"Kara...," he says, and she's not sure what he's going to say next but she won't give him that chance.

"Just come over here," she says. She holds up the edge of the blanket, and he climbs in, pressing the length of his warm, firm body against her.


	10. Unacceptable

Thank you again for following this story! And so sorry for the delay – I know I'm terrible!

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 10?

Author: abelard

Rating: M

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 10

"Just come over here," she says. She holds up the edge of the blanket, and he climbs in, pressing the length of his warm, firm body against her.

She's wearing next to nothing, and it takes him beyond all preconceived fantasies of Kara pliant and welcoming in his arms. Their times before – the times with the _real_ Kara, not that ghost his imagination conjured – were so frantic and sad. The thin material of her short cotton shift leaves all her limbs bare, and he's wearing only boxers, the one concession to modern dress he allowed himself before coming to this little backwards world. His skin presses against hers everywhere, and he gathers her in his arms, holds her body as tightly against his as he can, willing her to melt into his embrace and to never escape.

Apollo and his nymph...the hopeless quest for permanence and possession. He'll never be able to hold onto Kara and he knows it. It's just like her, just exactly like how she and he have always been, that he would chase her down after death, find her, and still not be able to hold on.

His dark thoughts are interrupted by Kara's soft laughter. Against his chest, her laugh feels like a fluttering in his heart. "I can't breathe," she whispers against his chest.

He forces himself to relax his hold and she draws back an inch farther than he would like her to. She stares at his face, and he knows she feels something for him. "What do you want?" he asks. He's been hard ever since climbing into the bed with her, his thick, swollen shaft pressing against her hips, she can't fail to know what he wants. But what _she_ wants is something he's vowed to get better at since he first saw her alive. He'll never make the mistake of second-guessing Kara Thrace again.

She blinks, twice, in the moonlight. He strokes her face, runs his hand through her hair, and wonders at the softness of it. "If it's true, that...that you love me," she says. "Then show me."

"Show you?" Lee repeats, like a dimwitted beggar in the presence of a goddess. Uncertainty flashes across Kara's face and Lee mentally punches himself for letting her think he is hesitant. This is exactly the mistake he's always made with her – well, one of the three thousand or so. He's always paused, double-checked, sought out verification, given her time to think (time to push away, time to doubt his desire for her). When maybe – clearly – this is what she really wants, to see his certainty, to know without question where he stands, what he feels, how much he wants.

"I'll show you, Kara," says Lee, locking his hand firmly in the moonlit gold of her hair, his other hand already creeping under the hem of her meager garment, running steadily up the inside of her thigh, "but I warn you, this has been a long time coming, and once we start, I won't have any restraint."

But they've already started, Lee's hand is so close to the heat between her thighs – _there_ – and she's so wet under his fingers, and Kara reaches down and feels his cock through his shorts, squeezes, and he groans before he can stop himself but it's all right, the way she grins, she likes it. Lee withdraws his hand from Kara's heat and uses it to brace himself against the mattress, pushing himself hard into her palm.

"I don't want restraint," she says. "I want you to show me everything."

Lee goes still at her words. He thinks he understands what she means: she wants to know all that he feels for her in his heart. But when it comes to Kara, Lee has always had a dozen different hearts, each one locked away inside the next, like a series of nesting wooden dolls. Treasure boxes within treasure boxes. And to open them all at once, Lee's always felt, would be disaster.

"I...I can't," Lee manages to say, despite the fact that Kara fondling him and pressing against him all over threatens to drive language from his mind.

Kara removes her wonderful, soft, warm hand from his thickness and Lee moans again at the loss. "Why not?" she demands.

Lee frowns. As much as he wants to take Kara's hand and put it back on him, where it belongs, he knows she deserves an answer. He takes a breath, lets it out, says the truth. "If I showed you everything – everything – that I feel for you, it would terrify you," he says.

She frowns, matching his expression. "How do you know?

He leans closer and gazes into her face, the face of his desire and despair. He locks his eyes on hers so that she can see how much he means this. "Because it scares the shit out of me," he answers.

She closes her eyes and kisses him. Kissing Kara is like nothing else. It's like eating sunlight. It's a forgetting of himself, not just who he is, but what he is. Lost in the fusion of his mouth and tongue with Kara's, Lee lets go of what it is to be separate, alone, individual, a being unto himself. Kissing Kara, he is a part of something far greater than himself, and he never wants his independence back.

But he knows they can fuse closer still.

"I need to be inside you," he whispers harshly against her ear, and he is already fingering her drenched opening as he says it.

"Gods, yes," Kara moans and it is all the permission he's going to seek, and all that he needs. Lee drives in with a strong thrust and though Kara cries out with the newness of being filled, he can't pause and wait for her to adjust. His thrusts are full force, he can't help but hammer her hard, and she's wrapping her four limbs around him and clutching him even more tightly to her, and finally, finally, Kara is coming around him and he is coming inside her and it's all, all, all right.

He kisses her as he withdraws, not wanting the fusion to end. He gathers her into his arms and she rests her head on his chest. Her breath warms his skin when she says, "I don't want you to go. I want you to stay with me, here."

Lee tries to keep the images from forming in his mind, but they come anyway: his father, leading a landing party of armed Marines, storming into this very cottage; Kara locked up in a transparent cage like Sharon's, subject to all the decisions and authority of everyone around her and having no autonomy of her own; Lee frantic on the other side of the impenetrable glass, desperate to be with her again and knowing he never can, that, like Helo and Sharon and their baby, he and Kara will never be alone together again.

"Go to sleep," he says into Kara's hair, but she already has. He wipes his mind clean and allows himself only to think of how he has always wanted to fall asleep just like this, as Kara's pillow, with the strands of her hair teasing his chest. He has always wanted to know what this felt like, and it feels like a dream.

The villagers seem to like Kara just fine, although they are stymied by the kinds of machines she's building, which Lee is helping her with, and they look at Lee like they don't know what to make of him. He isn't her brother, they know, and he isn't her husband, so what is he, exactly, and why is he sharing her little hut? Is he staying? Lee hears the gossip as he walks through the narrow dirt paths towards the market, where he buys foodstuff, plus whatever raw materials he can find that might be useful for his and Kara's projects.

There's one man among the villagers that Lee despises before he fully realizes why. The man's name is Bryce, and he's tall and broad-shouldered and good-natured and well-liked by everyone, which is why Lee can't figure out why he hates the man so much. Then, when he decides to pay closer attention, he notices that Bryce hovers around Kara a bit. When the two of them talk, Bryce touches Kara on the arm a few times, runs a hand swiftly down her back, smiles warmly at her. _Ah_, Lee thinks. _That's why I hate him_.

Unbidden, a thought flashes in Lee's mind: _Kara will need someone when I'm gone_. Lee squeezes his eyes shut tightly at that. When he thought, not so long ago, that Kara was dead, that she was gone forever, Lee sent up spiteful reprimands to the gods: _If only you'd let her live, even if I could never touch her, or speak to her, or even see her again, if only I knew that she was somewhere, safe and happy and whole, I could have accepted that_. Now he knows how wrong he was. This is the gods laughing at him, punishing him for his foolishness.

Kara's a Cylon and doesn't know it, and Lee prays she never learns it. He doesn't know what interest the Cylons have in this remote world, but he desperately hopes they've only deposited Kara here as a lone agent for reconaissance; he hopes they have no designs on this place, that they'll leave these people in their ignorance and their peace, and let Kara live out this lifetime without her memories.

These are the closest things to prayers Lee says now. He knows the gods and their ways well enough not to pray for himself any longer. They'll never grant his desires, they never do. Not for good.

"What's wrong?" Kara asks, stopping her work and squinting at him. The sun is unusually bright today, and she shields her eyes with her hand. Her hair is warm and yellow in the sun, and Lee steps forward, reaching out to stroke it. This makes Kara frown. "You look sad," she says. "What's wrong?"

"Kara!" Bryce shouts from twenty paces away. "Is this how you want the tracks laid?"

"I'll check in a minute," she yells back, and turns again to Lee. "What is it? Tell me."

Just then, Lee's comm beeps. Kara is startled, and is even more surprised when Lee reaches into his tunic, withdraws the small black device. "What _is_ that?" she asks. When it beeps again, she gasps. Her eyes are enormous when they lift to his. "What _are_ you? Where do you come from?" she demands.

Lee is caught – nothing he's shown Kara has readied her to see this level of technology – but he has to answer before the comm beeps again. It's Helo, he's sure of it, and he answers swiftly. No one else is around, so at least he doesn't have to fear anyone seeing this conversation but Kara. Who, of course, is plenty fearsome all by herself.

"Adama."

"Major, it's me, Helo," the voice from the comm says.

Kara says, "Oh my gods. How is he..."

"Major, we're coming for you. A landing party is organizing now. The Admiral says he needs you on board, Sir. He's no longer...accepting your...request for extended leave."

"How soon?" Lee asks. As soon as he heard the first beep, he knew this would be Helo's message.

"We're taking down a single raptor in one-quarter hour, Sir." Then, in a lower voice – and Lee knows that Helo is still on his side, still on _their_ side, by his secretive tone – "What do you want me to do, Apollo?"

Lee hears what Helo is asking. Should Helo stall, misdirect the Galactica team, so that Lee and Kara can try to run? But where would they run? The Marines will check all the known villages. All the people on the planet think the mountains are uninhabitable. That only leaves the sea, but there may be nothing on the other side of that water. He'd be happy to live forever with Kara alone on some faraway mountainside, or some secret island. But was that even a possibility?

"Sir?" Helo asks again, in the same conspiratorial voice.

"Lee, what's going on?" Kara asks, frowning.

Lee closes his eyes. There's no bringing Kara aboard the ship. There's no running away with her.

He opens his eyes and stares at her face, at the way she's breathing hard from worry and confusion. He thought he'd never see her breathing again.

Lee's gaze wanders over to Bryce, who's waiting expectantly, resting on a sledgehammer he's been using to drive in the wooden spikes for their rudimentary track. Bryce's eyes focus intently on Kara, anticipating she'll come towards him any moment.

_No. No. Unacceptable. _

There's no leaving Kara behind. That's not an option.

"Helo," says Lee, "run interference. Do whatever you can to give us time."

"Lee?" Kara asks, afraid.

"Copy that, Sir. Best of luck," Helo says, and the comm goes dead.


End file.
